Even back then, there was a lot of "stacking the deck" that UCLA did with their recruiting practices...but there is no question that there was more competitive balance in the men's game even then than there is in the women's game, even now. There are probably at the MOST ten programs that have a legitimate shot at winning the title in women's NCAA hoops in any given year these days (we saw two of them last night)...no Butler's gonna win on the women's side.
teams from one region of the country to another. UCLA was always out west and there were less quality teams there than in the South (KY, and ACC schools) and East (NYC & Philly schools in particular). The championship game was always East vs. West.
Not true. That was back in the era when second place teams could not got to the tournament, like the year that USC was ranked 2nd in the country and didn't win the Pac-8 so they didn't appear in the tournament. UCLA's championship wins were more against the midwest and southern schools than what is considered East. During the Wooden era UCLA won championship finals against Duke, Michigan, Dayton, North Carolina, Purdue, Jacksonville, Villanova, Florida State, Memphis and Kentucky.
And in the 1976 final is wasn't West vs. East, it was Big 10 vs. Big 10: Indiana vs. Michigan.
Yeah, I remember one year when South Carolina was in the ACC they went something like 29-0 and lost in the Conference Tourney and therefore didn't make the Big Dance. 1973 I think it was.
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